In my book Life Capsules for Personal Growth I write
“You must grow from knowing when you were born to knowing why.”
– MOFFAT MACHINGURA | Life Capsules for Personal Growth
What you were born for is more important than what you were born into. Your Reason of Birth (ROB) is more important than your Date of Birth (DOB).
One of the most important questions of your life will always be this one… In what way will the world be a better place because of the fact that you were born into it?
The answer to that question is the secret to your joy and satisfaction in this life.
You can spend your life complaining that you were born to the wrong parents, or into a wrong country or race.
But there is a better reason for your life than to spend it weeping over how and where it started, or who broke your heart along the way.
In Life Capsules for Success, I write that
“Our Success in life is greatly determined by what we choose to demand for others in this world.”
– MOFFAT MACHINGURA | Life Capsules for Success
What you demand from others – that’s your needs. What you demand for others that’s your Purpose.
Even if you eat food you will need more. If you buy clothes you will need more. Have sex and you will still want more…
The fulfilment of needs is not the fulfillment of life. Our satisfaction in life doesn’t come from the fulfillment of Needs, but from the fulfillment of Purpose.
Six People Who Lived With a Sense of Purpose
i. At eighteen, Martin Luther King had resolved he was born to help mankind through preaching the Christian gospel.
From that day, his life was spent fighting against black oppression and discrimination – like a Biblical Moses, he became a deliverer to many.
Your life too can be an instrument used for the deliverance of many.
ii. By age twenty-six Napoleon Bonaparte said this world lacks an example of greatness and he was going to be that example.
At the end of his life, he had risen from a poor pauper to one of the greatest emperors Europe has ever had.
If you took the greatness you believe about yourself more seriously; you too will live a story of greatness.
iii. It is said that at age twelve Adolf Hitler told his mum, “Mum, one day I will change the world!”
Sadly, though it meant the killing of more than ten million Jews, the truth is Hitler did touch the world in his own big way.
What was your greatest childhood ambition? Recall it because it could be your lifetime mission.
iv. Jesus approached his crucifixion with absolute resolve – telling his disciples “for this cause was I born!” Somehow he was convinced that what he was born for was what lay before him.
This is similar to Siddhartha Gautama Buddha who answered the call to being the voice of enlightenment in his time so much that he abdicated all palace luxuries and spent his lifetime admonishing nations.
v. Sir Isaac Newton whose discoveries of gravity and laws of motion have helped modernity to invent aeroplanes, automobiles and flying objects to the moon and Mars, was a man of clear purpose.
He was so sure he was born for physics so much that when asked why he was to die a virgin he responded he had reserved all his energies for the discovery of science.
vi. Mother Theresa lived with the homeless. If your home is among the homeless, then you are homeless too.
She held a conviction she was born not to be loved but to love; to lay down her life as an advantage for many.
All these are examples of people whose success in life hinges upon this one point: they lived purpose-driven lives. Just as hands were made to hold and eyes were made to see, these great people knew they were born for a purpose just as unique as themselves.
How Purpose Found Me…
Many are looking for a purpose. However, most times it is not that we find our purpose but that it is our purpose that finds us.
Sometimes a desire drops into your soul and it becomes a lifetime obsession.
I remember as a little boy, often I dreamt myself waking up to a deserted world, and I had to start the world anew.
Growing up, that image remained branded on my soul and could flash before my eyes even when I was walking in broad daylight.
Those dreams made such deep impressions on my life that to this day I write what I write because I want to create a new world.
I can safely say – I was taken to a land in my dreams and woke up my life turned into a pilgrimage.
You can almost call it the legend of the seeker. I didn’t find purpose, it’s purpose that found me.
A world dropped into my mind one night and I woke up forever young and restless.
I woke up seeking a new city that had its own foundations, only to find if God was to build that city, He would build it through me.
In reality, we don’t create destiny, but that destiny visits us and we only decide to keep it or to lose it.
Perhaps the main problem with life is we are so busy getting to know others so much that we cannot get to know ourselves.
How so well we get along with many while deep within we are at conflict with our own hearts!
We tell people to go mind their own business as if we were told the same thing we would know where to go.
Most of us do not know our core business in this life.
We are so busy complaining how miserably we were born, how shameful were the people that gave birth to us, or complain how terrible was the place where we were born; to the extent that we forget it’s not really when and how we were born that matters but why!
Whether born to a single mum, divorced parents, or poor background, born at the battlefront or through artificial insemination – what really matters is why you were born right now not why you were born that way.
Five Questions to Untie your Purpose
I. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?
Respect the things that you care about.
Your care points to your call.
Your curiosity reflects your intelligence.
In this world, what do you care about the most?
For some, it’s creating a heartbreak-free world, or fighting cancer, and some want to educate the poor.
Maybe you saw a man without limbs and you wondered how biotechnology can make artificial body parts.
The change that you want to see can be a clue to the person you were born to be.
ii. If you had all the money you wanted such that you never needed more, what would you spend your life doing?
Whatever it is, just go do it. And I am sure you may even do it for money.
Your prosperity lies in your purpose. Often we spend our lives doing what we “should” do instead of what we “want” to do.
At the sunset of our days, we find we did all that should have done but we are still disgusted with life.
That’s because making a living is not the same as making a life.
You make a life when you do what you love.
And you know you love something when just doing it paints a smile on your face and tickles a deep-seated laughter in your soul.
iii. What is that when you begin to do you lose track of time?
For others, it is experimenting in a lab, or painting a canvas, writing the whole day like J. K. Rowling used to do, or just thinking and writing life capsules like I enjoy doing.
(J. K. Rowling is the Best Selling Author of the Harry Potter Series – with more than 450 million copies sold)
Cherish those things that make you lose track of time, for they are the doorway to your own earthly eternity where time doesn’t exist.
They give you a taste of immortality.
They carry you into a realm where time cannot limit you.
Our passions are like vessels of time travel, in them, you leave time behind.
When you do what you love, you leave time ticking on chronometers and holding the movements of physical planets.
When you do what consumes you, life feels short and worthy of being short – but if you stick with what you tolerate life becomes long and every day unworthy to be so.
iv. If you had only one chance to live your life how would you live it?
Whatever it is, go live it right now because this life is the only chance that you have.
Sometimes you don’t have to discover your destiny, you just have to decide it.
Choose one thing noble enough to deserve your lifetime, and commit your remaining years of life to fulfilling it.
What if I am wrong in my choice? So you ask. A life journey to the wrong place has more lessons than a life with no journey at all.
Don’t be afraid of making a wrong turn because wrong turns can lead you to the right turn too.
Always look for the right way, but if you can’t find it just look forward and keep moving.
Even moving in circles brings us closer to finding a direction.
Time never waits for those who are waiting.
v. What can you do?
Your gift and ability are not your purpose – but it can be a clue to what you were born to do.
A knife has a sharp edge because it was made to cut.
A hammer has a strong iron head because it was made to drive nails and break things.
A car has wheels for motion and an airplane has wings to fly.
Our abilities say something about our purpose.
Your sharpness is a pointer to the kind of problems that you were born to simplify.
Your strength is a pointer to the things you were born to control or to destroy.
The things that your mind grips so fast can be a reflection of the field ground upon which you were born to operate (Architecture, Pure Science, Philosophy, or Religion).
Your hopes and dreams are a reflection of the world’s future that you were born to facilitate.
Cinderella was meant to be a Queen, what were you meant to be?
Next Chapter…
